At the cabin in the gulch, the girl hastened to prepare a substantial meal.  There was no one, now, to fear that the smoke would be seen.  Later, with cedar boughs and blankets, she made a bed for him on the floor near the fire-place.  When he would have helped her she forbade him; saying that he was her guest and that he must rest to be ready for the homeward trip.

Softly, the day slipped away over the mountain peaks and ridges that shut them in.  Softly, the darkness of the night settled down.  In the rude little hut, in the lonely gulch, the man and the woman whose lives were flowing together as two converging streams, sat by the fire, where, the night before, the convict had told that girl his story.

Very early, Sibyl insisted that her companion lie down to sleep upon the bed she had made.  When he protested, she answered, laughing, “Very well, then, but you will be obliged to sit up alone,” and, with a “Good night,” she retired to her own bed in another corner of the cabin.  Once or twice, he spoke to her, but when she did not answer he lay down upon his woodland couch and in a few minutes was fast asleep.

In the dim light of the embers, the girl slipped from her bed and stole quietly across the room to the fire-place, to lay another stick of wood upon the glowing coals.  A moment she stood, in the ruddy light, looking toward the sleeping man.  Then, without a sound, she stole to his side, and kneeling, softly touched his forehead with her lips.  As silently, she crept back to her couch.

* * * * *

All that afternoon Brian Oakley had been following with trained eyes, the faintly marked trail of the man whose dead body was lying, now, at the foot of the cliff.  When the darkness came, the mountaineer ate a cold supper and, under a rude shelter quickly improvised by his skill in woodcraft, slept beside the trail.  Near the head of Clear Creek, Jack Carleton, on his way to Granite Peak, rolled in his blanket under the pines.  Somewhere in the night, the man who had saved Sibyl Andres and Aaron King, each for the other, fled like a fearful, hunted thing.

* * * * *

At daybreak, Sibyl was up, preparing their breakfast But so quietly did she move about her homely task that the artist did not awake.  When the meal was ready, she called him, and he sprang to his feet, declaring that he felt himself a new man.  Breakfast over, they set out at once.

When they came to the cliff at the head of the gulch, the girl halted and, shrinking back, covered her face with trembling hands; afraid, for the first time in her life, to set foot upon a mountain trail.  Gently, her companion led her across the ledge, and a little way back from the rim of the gorge on the other side.

Five minutes later they heard a shout and saw Brian Oakley coming toward them.  Laughing and crying, Sibyl ran to meet him; and the mountaineer, who had so many times looked death in the face, unafraid and unmoved, wept like a child as he held the girl in his arms.